Wireless communication devices, such as cellular phones, personal digital assistants and the like, have components that include microprocessors, input peripherals such as a keypad, special function buttons and wheels, output peripherals, and information storage means. These devices run one or more software applications such as micro-browsers, address books, and email clients. Additionally, current generations of such devices have access to a plurality of services via the Internet. A wireless device may, for example, be used to browse web sites on the Internet, to transmit, receive, and execute media content such as graphics and graphical animations, and to execute streaming audio and/or video applications.
During the development of media content for mobile devices, a content developer may want to test completed content, and/or make a change to the content using a content development tool and immediately test the changes on a wireless communication device or a simulator of such device. This edit-and-test cycle can occur repeatedly until the developer is satisfied with the result. Each time the content developer wants to test content, he or she must follow a lengthy series of manual steps, which can become distracting, time consuming and tedious. Known media content development tools include Macromedia/Adobe Flash and Plazmic Content Developers Kit for Blackberry®.
Such manual steps depend on the particular development tool, and typically include exporting the developed content from the content development tool in a publishable format, publishing the exported content onto a web server, opening a browser on the wireless communication device or on the device simulator, entering the URL of the published content into the browser, then downloading the published content at the URL to the wireless communication device or device simulator for playback by the developer. It would be desirable to provide a solution that solves at least some of the challenges present in existing approaches to test media content developed for wireless communication devices.
It will be noted that throughout the appended drawings, like features are identified by like reference numerals.